from The Forest Sounds Like Waves

Today brought to mind the era of fish.Are we heading against the tide?

Today brought to mind the era of amphibians.Are we expanding our field of vision to include both sea and land?

Today brought to mind the era of reptiles.Do I feel the naked form of the globe in my belly?

Today brought to mind the era of small nocturnal animals.Can we survive without succumbing to dinosaur politics?

Today brought to mind the era of forest monkeys.Can we contemplate a healthy life?

Today brought to mind the journey of Australopithecus.Are we demolishing dead-end thinking with creativity?

Today brought to mind early humans, smiling and exhilarated.Are we shouting out the awe of being alive?

Today brought to mind the arrival of people at the islands of Japan.Should we discuss this with the people of Asia?<Hello Friends To start, let’s disarm and shake hands>

Today should we try to tightly embrace DNA worn out fromliving, the environment, and war?<Hello Living in the mixture of all those eras of human history is great!In this heart, the poem of humanity is crying with a smile on its face!>

Today I greeted a bird that was born unable to sing.Will it walk across the lands known as authentic human society?

Making the most of the cell of a dream amidst reality—today,with a new feeling, will we speak and share our voices?

New Forest

Where am I?

Where you stand?

Here is the opposite of over there.

In a forestbeyond the wind.

Familiar trees are here,as well as ones you’ve never seen.Somehow it appears that hereis not a different planet.

No, on the contrarythe truthis the same as before, probably here too.

While being the same as beforeit also differs completely.

That.

Is a matter of living.

Maybe.

The time when you knew the unknown thing.The time when, with someone else, you comprehended it.The time when you found something somewhere.Toward the direction of that illumination.

Or possibly you collided with a difficult mountain.Sorrow surges forward.In the dream of a mountain stream,the time when something ascends.Unknown to people, a wind from the interior joltstoward the direction of the mist.

It is here where you can see the new forest.

Look at the map of the heart—there’s a long way to go.

Well.You’ve come this far.

Wherever you may go,the origin was the ocean.Flowing from a forest spring, a river joins with the ocean,so mountains, too, are the origin.

Ladling new water not only numbs with coldnessbut also evokes warm emotions.The chill, too, has its gentleness.

And so it continues.Into the innermost.

Those who visit the forest’s interiorexist as though namelessand are famous.With every legendeyes shut,and the stories rustle.

At the moment when they narrowly miss each other.<Hello.>

While burdened with it all,everything is brand new.

With unknown whereabouts, it becomes possibleto think about one’s path with joy.

Where am I?

In a forestbeyond the wind.

Blue

The truth of blue and spring—

blueis dark and dull,

springis gloomy and distressing.

Even so, the green that chokes the grass,the yellow and pink that throblatermight appear blue.

<You’re still a greenhorn.>It’s not negotiable.

The ability to be blue—as it is, thatis a fantastic thing.

As we continue living,the heavy rain falls.Thunder rumbles in bones and their empty cave.

We cannot see what lies ahead.Storms blow away precious things, one after another.The roof never stops leaking.Gray scenery grows black. No longer visible, the original color has left us.

Despite it all, if we can hold on,the soft breeze will come,the rain will stop.

Over the silver color there comesthe newly nuanced blue sky.

With sunset blurring,new power arises.

Bones feelthat this wind filling their empty cavemust be love.

The ultramarine of the night sky is not darkness.Washed by the moon,it is a blue richer thanthe clear mid-day sky.

Life itselfmight bemuch bluer.

Maybe the rain will return, butrain permeated with loveis nothing to fear.

Ken'ichi Sasō (born 1968) is the author of eight books of poetry. The poems published here are from his 2015 collection Mori no namioto (The Forest Sounds Like Waves), an ecopoetic exploration of three forests: “The Forest of Homo Sapiens,” “The Forest of Love,” and “The Forest of the World.” Translations of his poetry have also appeared or are forthcoming in Forklift, Ohio, Hawai’i Review, Mantis, and Painted Bride Quarterly.

Noriko Hara has received degrees from the University of Tokyo and the University of Pittsburgh. She has taught at the University of Cincinnati and currently lives in Japan.

Joe DeLong is a writing lecturer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and he has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Cincinnati. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Lullwater Review, Mantis, Mid-American Review, Nimrod, Puerto del Sol, Redactions, and Roanoke Review. His scholarly article “Contemporary Memoirs of Mathematical Passion” is forthcoming in Mosaic.